An ink jet recording method is a recording method involving applying an ink droplet to any one of recording media such as plain paper and glossy media to form an image, and had become rapidly widespread owing to a reduction in its cost and an improvement in its recording rate. With the rapid spread of a digital camera in addition to an improvement in quality of an image recorded by the method, the method has been generally used as a method of outputting an image comparable to silver salt photography. Under the circumstances, in order to provide a recorded matter meeting the needs of the times, ideas have been proposed for not only, of course, the properties of ink for use in the ink jet recording method but also the properties of a coloring material.
As a coloring material for use in an ink jet cyan ink, there has been used a dye excellent in color developability, or a pigment excellent in water resistance, weather resistance, gas resistance, and the like. However, there have been cases where when forming an image with an ink using a dye as a coloring material, the water resistance and weather resistance of the image may be inferior to those of an image formed with an ink using a pigment. In order to solve such a problem, there has been proposed the combined use of a dye and a pigment as coloring materials (see, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication No. S60-45668 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-323196). It is reported therein that the combined use can improve the water resistance, weather resistance, and further gas resistance of an image formed on a recording medium having a porous ink receiving layer, while maintaining excellent color developability of a dye.